Aussie farmers, greens in push on salinity

By FWi staff

AUSTRALIAS farmers and environmentalists are about to join forces in a major push to address salinity, the single biggest threat to future agricultural production in Australia.

The National Farmers Federation and the Australian Conservation Foundation will soon launch a “new millennium” partnership to save the land, according to a report in The Weekly Times.

The NFFs executive director, Dr Wendy Craik, told the newspaper that the strategy was borne out of frustration with the growing severity of the problems and the inability of governments to move quickly enough.

“When you bounce along the road to Cowra (a town in southern New South Wales) you probably dont realise that its salinity causing the problem,” Dr Craik said.

“Similarly, where you see discolored or gradually crumbling buildings in the cities, few people would appreciate that its probably rising salt doing the damage.

“Thats why it will be important to have a massive communications program, on the scale of the AIDS campaign, so that people actually realise there is a problem and thats not a little one,” she said.

The partnership follows the findings of a disturbing report published in The Age newspaper that shows Australians are the second most extravagant water users in the world, despite living on the second driest continent.

According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics report, Water Account for Australia, every year Australia uses a million litres of water per person.

Only North Americans use more – two million litres each, according to 1995 figures from the World Resources Institute.

Australia is the second driest continent after Antarctica, where there is negligible rainfall.

The high level of water use is putting pressure on Australias limited water resources and driving the widespread ecological degradation of Australias rivers, wetlands and estuaries along the eastern seaboard.

Spreading of salinity is undermining Australias agricultural production and its estimated that Adelaides drinking water, drawn from the Murray River, will be unfit for human consumption within 20 years.

Australian Conservation Foundation land and water coordinator Tim Fisher told The Age that Australians were too greedy and wasteful with water.

“Half of domestic use is watering gardens and flushing toilets,” he told the newspaper.

“There are still many homes without dual-flush systems and we seem obsessed with green lawns and rainforest plants, which need copious amounts of water.

“It is time we started planting native plants that are suited to the Australian environment.”

According to the water report, agriculture accounts for 70% of all water use, with consumption rising 20% from mid-1994 to mid-1997.

More than half is used to water pasture for livestock or grow grain, while sugar, rice and cotton collectively account for a third of
agricultural water use.